'Murder On The Orient Express' 4K Blu-ray Review: All Aboard The Resolution Train

John Archer
, ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

The Film

So I was wrong about Murder On The Orient Express.

From the moment I first heard they were making another film version of Agatha Christie’s classic crime novel, I was confident that it would be an abject failure. Surely the whole Hercule Poirot thing had been done to death, I thought. Especially when it came to that most popular of Christie's Poirot novels, Murder On The Orient Express.

People who already knew the legendary story would surely, I figured, not be compelled to go and see the whole thing acted out yet again - no matter how stellar the cast doing the acting out might be. And I just couldn’t see a younger generation of moviegoers embracing such a ‘golden oldie’ crime tale - especially when many of the big-name cast members are now, with the best will in the world, comfortably the far side of 50 years old.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express. 20th Century Fox

Hercule Poirot does his best steam train impression.

Yet here we are today looking at an estimated $350 million take for Murder… on a budget of around $55 million. So yep, I was pretty mistaken with this one.

Having now seen the film for myself, though, I remain a little mystified as to why it's performed quite so well. It has some memorable moments, and Kenneth Branagh adds a few interesting new nuances and quirks to Poirot’s charismatic character. The film also looks very handsome indeed.

However… its pacing is choppy. Branagh (who also directs the film) makes a few uncharacteristically strange and distracting shooting decisions. And in the end, the only thing about the film that carries much narrative weight is Branagh’s own performance. Everything else - the classic story, the crime, even the performances by the other big-name leads - feels frustratingly inconsequential.

Release details

Studio: 20th Century Fox

What you get: The 4K Blu-ray, the (multi-region) HD Blu-ray, and a digital download code.

Extra features: Commentary by director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green; a featurette about Agatha Christie; featurette on the character of Hercule Poirot; three featurettes on the actors; featurette on the production design and costumes; featurette on the filming process including locations and effects; featurette on developing the score; deleted scenes

While it might not be the greatest film to find its way onto 4K Blu-ray so far, Murder On The Orient Express is certainly one of the best looking.

Branagh shot the film on large format film (65mm - 70mm minus the soundtrack!) in a bid to, as he puts it, capture the film’s exotic settings as faithfully and immersively as possible. And as with Dunkirk (reviewed here), the 4K digital scan of this large format film found on the 4K Blu-ray delivers stunning results.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express. 20th Century Fox

Chilly atmosphere.

Detail levels, for starters, are consistently outstanding. There’s a beautiful, almost granular quality to the image that brings out levels of detail and depth you just don't get with the HD Blu-ray (good though that transfer also is). The film’s gorgeous sets, beautiful costumes and spectacular facial hair look fantastically real thanks to 4K’s extra texturing and finesse.

This film was overwhelmingly made using practical effects and sets rather than CGI, and it shows.

Also striking is how natural and, for want of a better word, cinematic all this detail looks. Grain levels are extremely subtle and natural compared with some 4K film scans I’ve seen, yet there’s no hint of noise reduction processing or ‘softening’.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express, 20th Century Fox

Where does Judi Dench's hair end and hat start?

The often exquisite detail in the image is joined by some equally resplendent high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color work. Every single shot, from the opening, sun-drenched vista of ‘Jerusalem’ to the stunning snowy mountains that form the backdrop to the Orient Express investigation and even the darkest of the train interiors looks spectacularly elevated versus the HD Blu-ray thanks to the introduction on the 4K disc of extra brightness and color range.

The image feels both more immediate and more three-dimensional, for instance - especially helpful when defining the sense of space in key interiors such as the main train corridor and the dining car. Exteriors look more authentic and naturally lit. The extra light range leaves some night scenes - such as those around the small, brightly lit train station - looking almost poetically beautiful.

While it’s the extra brightness and color that make the biggest impact, the transfer also delivers pleasingly rich and detailed dark scenes. There’s scarcely a trace of the grey wash over dark areas that we’ve seen with some other scanned-from-film 4K Blu-ray titles. Be warned, though, that the 4K disc’s fairly aggressive use of HDR will challenge the backlighting capabilities of all but the very best LCD TVs.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express, 20th Century Fox

Michelle Pfeiffer is just one member of a truly all-star cast.

The only minor issue I found with the 4K Blu-ray picture is that it sometimes leaves skin tones and some of the train’s wooden interiors looking a touch too orange. Fortunately, the image’s exuberantly rich general feel ensures that this mild orange push seldom becomes a distraction.

Sound Quality

While the HD Blu-ray of Murder On The Orient Express only gets a DTS-HD mix, the 4K disc enjoys a surprisingly potent, detailed and much more expansive Dolby Atmos mix.

The surround speakers are used impressively consistently and thoughtfully for providing both ambiance and specific placement effects. Patrick Doyle’s reasonably effective if rather traditional score is also mixed artfully into every channel - including, at times, the height ones. As a result, it seems to exist on a higher, wider plane than the main sound mix - an actually quite beautiful effect I’ve not heard delivered so effectively before.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express, 20th Century Fox

Johnny Depp on the fast train to hell.

Voices are superbly mixed for relative volume, clarity and location context, and the mix even manages to open up its scale and bass performance dramatically on occasion - most notably the sequence where the train is hit by an avalanche, and the moment where the score gradually builds up a head of steam as the camera pans around the passengers assembled in the dining car after the murder.

The scale and clarity of the audience mix combined with the first-class visuals really couldn't have tried any harder to distract you from the film's narrative flaws.

Extra Features

The only extra found on the 4K Blu-ray disc is a commentary track by Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green.

Branagh has proved a warm, natural and engaging character on previous commentary tracks, and so it proves again here. Ironically he’s also more graceful about letting Green share commentary time than he is about letting the film’s secondary cast share screen time with Poirot!

The two commentators sometimes labor a particular point for too long and, as often happens when the writer is present in a commentary, there’s a little too much explaining of themes, story angles and character arcs that you’re already fairly familiar with from having just watched the film.

Overall, though, the commentary is a pleasant enough ramble if you were engaged enough by the film to want to find out more about it.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express, 20th Century Fox

Don't mess with a dancer with a short fuse.

The remaining extras are all found on the HD Blu-ray packaged with the 4K one. The back of the Murder On The Orient Express 4K Blu-ray box claims that this HD Blu-ray is region locked, but the supposedly Region A-only US disc I tested played perfectly fine on a standard, non-modified UK Blu-ray player.

These Blu-ray extras start with a good 20-minute documentary about Agatha Christie. This features an engaging mixture of interviews with everyone from members of Christie’s own family and other writers to various Murder On The Orient Express cast and crew members.

It arguably only really lives up to its billing as being a look at Christie’s life towards the end, but it’s worth watching regardless of whether you’re already familiar with Christie and her works or not.

Following this relatively substantial featurette comes a fairly long series of smaller ones of varying degrees of interest. The least interesting of these, surprisingly, are the three covering the actors used to bring Christie’s legendary characters to life. They’re just too short (the featurettes, not the actors…) and by the numbers to hold your interest.

The best of the cluster of featurettes are The Art Of Murder On The Orient Express, which tracks the production and costume design, and a fairly lengthy one about the filming process, which takes in everything from the issues associated with filming in 65mm to the special effects work and the film’s combination of location shoots and immense set designs.

The section showing how they used thousands of LED screens to provide the icy view through the train’s windows rather than using green screen is particularly mind blowing.

Photo: Murder On The Orient Express 4K Blu-ray box art.

The Murder On The Orient Express 4K Blu-ray box art.

Things wrap up with an excellent set of deleted and (sometimes very) extended scenes, all offered with useful commentary by Branagh and Green. One in the bazaar in Istanbul station where we’re introduced to all the train’s characters is particularly interesting, as it gives the characters more of the extra background the film feels like it needs. But you can also see how this sequence would just have held the finished film up. Maybe they should have dripped bits of what was cut in this sequence into conversations or other scenes later in the film.

Verdict

While Murder On The Orient Express is merely a passable rather than a must-own film, the 4K Blu-ray is arguably a must-own disc thanks to its frequently reference-grade visuals and surprisingly exquisite Dolby Atmos mix.